Another curious website. The “Faceanalyzer” claims to have “a patented process that correlates certain facial types to personality features.”
I can see how face recognition technology can assess certain facial characteristics to determine race. But I’m not sure about the science of determining “intelligence,” “politeness,” “promiscuity,” “gay factor,” and more from a picture.

You may not have observed it at your place of business, but yesterday the Mississippi Tax Commission was closed for “Robert E. Lee and Dr. Martin Luther King Junior’s birthdays.”
I wouldn’t have been so surprised to hear that from some small southern county office, but from a state office? I guess that’s Mississippi.

I didn’t realize until today that Knoxville will be hosting a marathon on March 20.
From time to time I’ve had a fleeting interesting in running a marathon someday, just to say I did one. But that desire has never been strong enough to translate into actually train for one. In fact, the longest distance I’ve ever run is 11 miles, so 26 miles sounds painful.
Is there some sort of “marathons made easy” training program out there?

Saturday afternoon I was bicycle riding down Murdoch Drive and saw a police car blocking off passage to one of the side streets. As I rode by I glanced down the street and saw at least 6 more police cars 1/3 of a mile or so away. It’s unusual anytime you see a police congregating on a side street, but this was even more notable because it’s a mostly commercial area that’s quiet on the weekends.
At the time I didn’t know what it was, but apparently it was this:

Man found dead with bicycle in West Knoxville ditch Authorities are investigating the discovery of a man who was found dead alongside a bicycle in a ditch on the side of a West Knoxville road.
The man was found about 4 p.m. near Cogdill Road. It was not immediately clear if foul play was involved in the man’s death.
Authorities were not available Saturday to provide any additional information about the discovery of the body.

Oy. I hope we don’t have a murderer stalking bicyclists in West Knoxville.
UPDATE: Information from an e-mail list indicates that the rider, Tom Olmstead, died of a heart attack. Apparently Mr. Olmstead was active in Knoxville bicycling for many years and would have just turned 60.

It’s only a matter of time until Iran comes to the fore, I suppose:

The United States has been conducting secret reconnaissance missions inside Iran to help identify potential nuclear, chemical and missile targets, The New Yorker magazine reported Sunday.
The article, by award-winning reporter Seymour Hersh, said the secret missions have been going on at least since last summer with the goal of identifying target information for three dozen or more suspected sites.
Hersh quotes one government consultant with close ties to the Pentagon as saying, “The civilians in the Pentagon want to go into Iran and destroy as much of the military infrastructure as possible.”
One former high-level intelligence official told The New Yorker, “This is a war against terrorism, and Iraq is just one campaign. The Bush administration is looking at this as a huge war zone. Next, we’re going to have the Iranian campaign.”

I’m very surprised to see Pentagon correspondents relaying official denials to this story today. Government officials are usually quick and forthright in coming clean about secret operations.